Acrylic Painting Approaches

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Landscapes

Title: Sailing Alone
I created the background by applying a multi-colored wash and let it
dry, washed in transparent colors to suggest clouds, established the
hills using darker washes, and carefully painted the sailboat.
Title: Across the Field
In this painting a light wash of many colors was applied. Background
trees were suggested using darker values applied wet. The barn was
painted using a combination of hard and soft edges and a bit of dry
brush. I completed the painting with foreground spattering.

Title: Hermitage
Here is an example of painting a suggested subject. I washed in a
light background. A slanting line and white patch suggested a hill
and cottage, so I developed them using positive and negative painting
techniques.

Title: Color Brew
I penciled in the design, applied a multi-colored wash, then began
painting shapes. Dry brush, scraping, and small washes define the
shapes.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About me

Wes has painted for thirty-five years and has his works displayed at the Denise Oliver Gallery in Harrison, Idaho and the Dahmen Barn in Uniontown, Washington. He has had many one-person exhibits in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, including Interplayers Playhouse and the Jacklin Arts and Cultural Center. He teaches painting classes for North Idaho College, Spokane Art Supply, and the Dahmen Barn.

Insights

I just returned from Alaska. Its vast landscapes constantly change because of light. They have an ethereal quality perfectly suited to watercolor painting. When you paint with watercolors, think about painting light and atmosphere as much as you do about more substantial shapes.

About Creation

“You jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.” Ray Bradbury

APPLICATION METHODS: Acrylics can be painted like watercolors using washes to create transparent passages. They can be painted translucently with the addition of diluted titanium white mixed with other pigment. They can be painted opaquely on a dry ground like oils using titanium white and/or thick pigment.

PAINTING PLANES OR LAYERS: Combining these three approaches creates paintings that have a three-layered structure--transparent deep space, translucent middle distance, and opaque foreground. This arrangement is variable.

SPECIAL TECHNIQUES: Acrylic pigments can be applied in the following ways: Flat washes, graded washes, variegated washes (separate washes mingled), moist into wet, lifting, water and alcohol dropped into a wet medium, glazing, dry brush, stippling and spattering, wiping, tissue lifting, plastic wrap, impasto, scraping through impasto, scumbling, building textures, embossing patterns into thick paint, creating and blending edges, and many more. Experiment with them so you create examples for your studio use. Because acrylic pigments bind with paper, you must lift them quickly.

DESIGN: Create a design as you would for any painting. Through it, you establish the placement and relationship of shapes. Try to favor large and mid-size shapes (Papa and Momma Bear). Small shapes tend to disappear. Select related shapes (rectangles, circles, or triangles) and make them tell a story by overlapping and interlocking them. If you are working from a subject, simplify and exaggerate the shapes. Use the Rule of Thirds to locate your impact area.

VALUES: Create a value study by first establishing your light source. Link together light areas, and shade in linked mid-tone and dark areas. Dark shapes placed next to light shapes create visual drama, while mid-tone values relate light to dark shapes and encourage the viewer’s eyes to travel around the picture.

COLORS: Select a limited number of colors so you don’t confuse yourself, forget about values (and even design), and create disunity. Used transparently, acrylic pigments do not fade like watercolor pigments. Used translucently and opaquely, they dry darker than they appear when first applied.

If you want to see how value is expressed in color, use one color (other than yellow) and create light shapes by diluting pigments with water and dark shapes by using more pigment.

If you want a harmonious painting, use analogous (neighboring) warm or cool colors.

If you want contrast, use complementary (contrasting) colors such as yellow and purple, orange and blue, or red and green. When complements are mixed, they cancel each

other out and produce neutrals. Add more of one color than the other to the neutral mix to produce semi-neutrals. Place pure color in the impact area.

If you want lively color, use the primary triad (yellow, red, and blue). This creates clashing combinations. When two primaries are mixed to produce a secondary (for instance, primary red and blue will produce secondary purple), the remaining primary (in this case yellow) will cancel the secondary, producing a neutral or semi-neutral.

Color can be overwhelming and make it impossible for you to see value patterns. Use color to create value first, then temperature variation (favoring warm over cool or cool over warm), and intensity (brightness and dullness). This is why it is best to select a simple palette so you can keep track of what you are doing.

Generally, apply an underpainting first. Color can be applied as a wash or painted thinly onto dry paper or canvas. Allow some of this to show through subsequent translucent and opaque paint applications.